Tomorrow, 28
Posted on | January 25, 2006 |
Tomorrow is my birthday, and today my mother sent me a box full of calla lilies. Each waxy bloom perfect, it’s yellow pistil caked with pollen.
She has never sent me flowers before—every delicate stem wrapped in cellophane—and receiving the long lovely box at the door and putting the long-necked blooms into water made me profoundly happy. It is funny that flowers can do this. So much is contained in the gesture of giving them. These flowers were saying: safety, unending love, openness.
This year I became a mother, and as a result, began to see my mother in an entirely different way. Since my father died, my mother and I have been navigating new terrain in our relationship, and it has not been without land mines. So much lies buried in the geography of our shared lives. So much love and wonder and hurt in our souls is brought to the surface when we talk, and sometimes stumbling upon each other’s every weakness—clumsily, hurtfully, without grace. But gradually we are learning to keep some things: to keep safety, to keep openness, to keep love steadfast even when we come up against these jagged edges.
So with my birthday coming tomorrow, I find myself contemplating how this day is wholly mine, and yet wholly hers as well. My birth marked a turning point in her life—that changed everything for her. I understand this now with new wonder and appreciation. I realize the sacrifice, the worry, the frustration of motherhood that she felt—and see myself in her, just as I also see how much I am her opposite.
This is the gift and the challenge of being a parent: to shepherd a little person into adulthood and then let them go to be anyone they want to be—entirely unique unto themselves. My son is already, even before he can talk, totally his own person—and I can’t help but wonder how he’ll see me throughout his life. First just as his mama, but maybe later hopefully as a source of inspiration—-and maybe as the writer, the artist, the teacher and dreamer that I am. And I wonder too what he will be like throughout his life, and how I will see him—-as a child first, and then later as his own person, and a source of inspiration.
Last year on my birthday I was immensely pregnant, right on the cusp of the unknown. I couldn’t fathom how my life would be, and my days were heavy with a certain anxiety—not to mention actual the actual heaviness of my belly. Then blink, and a year has passed, and here I am, beginning training for a marathon, in the midst of renovations on a new home, and the mother to a small boy who has started taking steps (!) towards me, eyes twinkling and arms outstretched.
Like each beautiful lily drawing drinking water from the jar, the moments of this year have been sweet and good.
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40 Responses to “Tomorrow, 28”
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January 25th, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
You will have a marvelous birthday!
BTW, the Hitchhiker Team posted about your blog here: http://hgttb.blogspot.com/2006/01/my-topography-christina-rosalie.html
January 25th, 2006 @ 10:34 pm
Amazing how quickly everything turns around. Have a really wonderful birthday tomorrow. Do something for yourself you’ve always wanted to do, fearlessly and happily! We’ll be thinking of you!
January 25th, 2006 @ 10:43 pm
Happy Birthday! Isn’t it amazing how much our lives change after chlidren. You look back and life before them seems so long ago…
January 25th, 2006 @ 11:00 pm
This was just beautifully written, Christina. What a gift your mother has in you that you have the maturity and insightfulness to look past those jagged edges and see the bigger picture of your relationship. Too many people get caught on those jags and never move beyond them. That you can is both a blessing and a gift…
January 25th, 2006 @ 11:28 pm
i loeved what you wrote
but i really have to say
that those pictures!
ohmybreath…those pictures!
i had to go back 3 times
just to gaze at them again…
i don’t know if its the newer bigger moniter
but i don’t think thats it…
its the clarity against the blurred…
wow…
i LOVED those pictures
January 25th, 2006 @ 11:28 pm
oh…and happy birthday
January 25th, 2006 @ 11:36 pm
Christina, my dear and lovely faerie girl of the new england wild…you are a wonderful and inspirational person and I hope that your birthday is full of surprise and awe. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished this year. Even though I’ve “known” you for just a few months, it’s been a pleasure to watch you experience the beauty all around you.
(And, may I say that I find it oddly satisfying that your mother sent you flowers for your birthday…not just any flower, but my flower. The flower that everyone close to me knows is my favorite. I find that their graceful beauty fits you well.)
January 25th, 2006 @ 11:40 pm
Christina, I have been enjoying your blog for nearly a month now. I can’t say that I can even remember how I “found” you, but I am glad that I did. Have an excellent birthday.
January 26th, 2006 @ 1:27 am
I was completely flabergasted when I learned your age! You have wisdom and talent beyond your years, darling. That makes me sound ancient - I’m only 33. You just have such a grace and maturity about you.
I too loved what you wrote about your mother.
So glad to have found you. Have a fabulous birthday! xoxo
January 26th, 2006 @ 1:44 am
Happy Birthday! (It’s my birthday tomorrow, too. I’ll be 44.) Have a great day, and a great year, and I hope all your wishes come true!
January 26th, 2006 @ 2:46 am
happiest of birthdays to you, christina!
this year (i’m a january baby too!) was a ‘flower craving’ year for me as well…in that, i desired - received - and was made immensely happy by - flowers. they are delightful…and i have made a commitment to buy them more often for myself…for work, for home.
may you be celebrated with joy and abandon!
January 26th, 2006 @ 3:03 am
Gave a wonderful day. I remeber long ago when I sent flowers to one of my boyfriend’s mothers as a way of saying “thank you” to her for raising him.
Sorry for the loss of your father. I lost mine 11 years ago, my mo 2 years ago.
Good that you are raisning your son to be his own person - they do indeed change your life.
January 26th, 2006 @ 3:24 am
What an honest, insightful, and lovely post. Wishing you a birthday filled with wonder & delight (just like your blog!)
January 26th, 2006 @ 5:25 am
I so wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birthday Christina. but with my allergy pill that makes me sleepy, I couldn’t stay awake up until midnight like I had planned…
Happy, Happy Birthday to you my dear friend.
January 26th, 2006 @ 7:18 am
I hope you have a wonderful day tomorrow! Lovely flowers, i love receiving flowers, it’s a pity nobody ever sends them to me.;-(
January 26th, 2006 @ 8:02 am
Joyeux Anniversaire! May the very most you wish for be the very least you receive.
-Nicole
January 26th, 2006 @ 8:15 am
Those photos are breathtaking, what a lovely gift from your mother. And what a lovely gift you’ve given her back with this beautiful post.
January 26th, 2006 @ 8:59 am
Happy Birthday Christina!
January 26th, 2006 @ 9:08 am
Oh happiest birthday ever!!! So much magic in your life— and how I love to read how you describe it. Sending you HUGE hugs and best wishes for a wonderful wonderful week.
January 26th, 2006 @ 9:45 am
It’s now officially your birthday! I hope you have a wondrous day. The calla lillies are beautiful, eek! I love flowers! and so thoughtful and loving the way you wrote about your mother and your thoughts on being a mother to Bean. (I thought of him the other day while vacumning.) You are one of the most amazing women of the blogosphere, and I am always challenged and uplifted by you!
January 26th, 2006 @ 9:56 am
Happy Birthday!
All my very best to you!
January 26th, 2006 @ 10:26 am
Happy Birthday Christina! I hope this coming year is filled with wonder, love, health and happiness.
January 26th, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
Such beautiful photos as always.
I hope you have a great day - and may all your birthday wishes come true!
January 26th, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
28?
Your words are so wise for only 28.
You have so many adventures ahead of you.
I wish you good ones.
January 26th, 2006 @ 1:50 pm
roots and wings…that is the challenge
hope you have a lovely birthday!
January 26th, 2006 @ 4:27 pm
Happy Birthday, and thank you for sharing your flowers with us in those gorgeous photos.
January 26th, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
Congratulations!
Thank you for the inspirational post and for sharing your lovely flowers. Have a wonderful birthday-day tomorrow.
January 26th, 2006 @ 8:55 pm
Happy Birthday, and thank you for sharing your beautiful words, and bits of your life with us all.
January 26th, 2006 @ 11:07 pm
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
You smell like a monkey!
And you look like one too!
Teehee.
January 27th, 2006 @ 1:13 am
Happy, happy birthday Christina. I hope your day was full of lots of joy, laughter and love.
This post is written with such eloquence and truth. Beautiful.
January 27th, 2006 @ 1:14 am
Happy Birthday! Hope you had a fantastic day
January 27th, 2006 @ 3:06 am
are those your eyes at the top of the blog? They are breath takingly beautiful! The photo of those eyes and those brows are gorgeous.
January 27th, 2006 @ 6:37 am
Happy (belated by a day) Birthday, Christina! May the universe continue to show you ways to harvest and share its bounty.
Peace,
Carla
January 27th, 2006 @ 11:40 am
I’ll have to join Carla in saying Happy belated Birthday Christina!
January 27th, 2006 @ 3:48 pm
Parents sending us gifts on our birthdays, remembering the joy of that day in their lives … the wonder and amazement of it … I am always touched by my mother’s birthday notes because I know how much she loves us, me, her children. And now that I am a father I am begining, like you, to appreciate some of what my mother experienced raising us … This appreciation, is the best of life.
January 28th, 2006 @ 2:53 am
It’s a bountiful new year for you and your family! I love reading about it all. Thanks for the poetry and paintings reflecting life way up there in the hills of Vermont. And Happy Birthday!!!
*Steph
January 28th, 2006 @ 11:27 am
Happy Birthday for all of your tomorrows.!
I’m a forty-nine year old father of four and after
reading this… I have to go and call my mother.
Thanks for sharing.
-Sully
January 28th, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
Your photos and your words are beautiful! Thank you for sharing them.
February 1st, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
wow, I know I’m so late here but I really want to wish you a happy, happy birthday. hope it was fantastic and marvelous and delightful and all those lovely words…
February 18th, 2006 @ 3:28 pm
Yet another birthday I missed during my month-long absence… Happy Belated Birthday wishes, Christina! You’re so young and already weaving such a beautiful pattern to your life. Hope it’s a year filled with wonder and awe and beauty and the shape of all things loved.